&nbspO for a muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention . . .
Shakespeare, Henry V, Prologue

15 February 2010

Toward a Definition of Poetry

Poetry is knowledge, salvation, power, abandonment. An operation capable of changing the world, poetic activity is revolution by nature; a spiritual exercise, it is a means of interior liberation. Poetry reveals this world; it creates another. Bread of the chosen; accursed food. It isolates; it unites. Invitation to the journey; return to the homeland. Inspiration, respiration, muscular exercise. Prayer to the void, dialogue with absence; tedium, anguish, and despair nourish it. Prayer, litany, epiphany, presence. Exorcism, conjuration, magic. Sublimation, compensation, condensation of the unconscious. Historic expression of races, nations, classes. It denies history: at its core all objective conflicts are resolved and man at last acquires consciousness of being something more than a transient. Experience, feeling, emotion, intuition, undirected thought. Result of chance; fruit of calculation. Art of speaking in a superior way; primitive language. Obedience to the rules; creation of others. Imitation of the ancients, copy of the real, copy of a copy of the Idea. Madness, ecstasy, logos. Return to childhood, coitus, nostalgia for paradise, for hell, for limbo. Play, work, ascetic activity. Confession. Innate experience. Vision, music, symbol.

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Jeff Newberry (jeff.newberry-AT[NOSPAM]-gmail.com)holds a Ph.D in English from the Creative Writing Program at the University of Georgia. His chapbook, A Visible Sign, is available from Finishing Line Press. He teaches English at Abraham Baldwin College in Tifton, Georgia, where he lives with his wife, Heather, son Benjamin, and Scout the wonder dog.